Guard for a day ...
PA Auckland A West Auckland fanner stood lone guard over a $250,000 jewel-en-crusted champagne bottle — armed with a shotgun loaded with blanks. Mr Bill Spence took care of security arrangements on Monday at the Matua Valley vineyards when the men who had been assigned to the job were two hours late. They had been sent to Waiuku, south of Auck-
land, instead of Waimauku. Mr Spence, who had been using the gun to scare birds off the vineyards, stood in. When he appeared with his gun, the bottle’s French guardian, Giles de Courcel, "just about had to be scraped off the ceiling,” said a spokesman, Mr Michael Hooper. “He was already nervous enough about the whole French thing in New Zealand,” he said.
The bottle, made to celebrate the bicentenary of the winemaker, PiperHeldsieck, in 1976, had to be “discreetly snuck out” of the Regent Hotel to a helicopter in Mechanics Bay when strong winds made landing on the hotel roof dangerous. The bottle was in Wellington yesterday and will be displayed today at Pascoe’s jewellers in Queen Street, Auckland, this time under armed guard.
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Press, 27 February 1986, Page 36
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189Guard for a day ... Press, 27 February 1986, Page 36
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